Dora: A Headcase

by Lidia Yuknavitch

  “She cut him. Across the neck. Almost his jugular. Fucker nearly bled out right there.”

  “Like in the movies!” Ave Maria sings.

  I give her a drop dead look.

  “Or not,” she whimpers.

  I drop to the curb like childhood leaving a body. I put my head between my legs. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. Don’t motherfucking pass out. Your feet are roots in the ground your feet are roots in the ground I can’t feel my feet.

  “Ida!” An Ave Maria high note.

  Then Little Teena’s hand on my back.

  In my head there are so many things I don’t understand. Songs, words, images I don’t even know where they came from. Are they from my life, or did I dream them up? Is there a difference? I open my eyes and sit up. It’s dusk. The clouds streaking through the sunset make the sun look wrinkled. Maybe it doesn’t matter what’s real and what you dream up. Maybe what you dream up keeps you alive. I can feel Little Teena rubbing my back. I can hear Ave Maria humming. I look at the wrinkled up sun again. The sun in the Seattle sky is a girl belly button above low waist skinny jeans.

  I stand up. I retrieve my iPhone from my Dora purse. I text, Whrs she. Xactly.

  Little Teena and Ave Maria’s asses buzz. They check their cells simultaneously. God I love technology.

  Ave Maria says “They’ ve got her in a juvie center near Renton!”

  I text, Juvie? She’s nearly 18. Whyd thy snd her 2 juvie?

  Little Teena touches my shoulder as gently as a loving brother ever could. “Ida, Obsidian’s not nearly eighteen, honey. Obsidian turns sixteen next month. Didn’t you know?”

  See what I mean? One-two punch. Only this isn’t about me. This is about the girl I love. With all my heart. I love a girl named Obsidian and somebody’s gotta save her from girlhood before it’s too late. This time my feet aren’t just on the ground. They’re in the ground. I’m a motherfucking girl tree. I text, “Cum on. we’re goin.”

  “Going where?” Ave Maria peeps, running alongside me with her hands and arms inexplicably windmilling.

  “GunA gt my hom gal outa thr.,” I text.

  Without blinking, or talking, or thinking, Ave Maria pulls on her hair on both sides of her head and sings up toward the falling wrinkled sun, “We’re gonna need the Jag,” absolutely knowing what it’ll mean. Way.

  24.

  WHILE AVE MARIA AND LITTLE TEENA WORK ON STEALING the Jag yet again, I stomp my way into night toward Marlene’s. Watching my own Docs on Seattle pavement I have another epiphany. I don’t need home. A daddy. I don’t need my mommy. What I need is my Marlene.

  At Sea-Tac Airport Marlene is a he: Hakizamana Ojo. Like I told you before, Hakizamana Ojo is in charge of manning one of those full-body scanners. He has a high level of clearance when it comes to security. He is very good at his job. He’s been promoted three times – even Homeland Security couldn’t find anything weird about him, despite his name. There’s probably no one at Sea-Tac who knows more about security than Hakizamana Ojo. Nor more about genitalia. Nor more about identity swapping.

  One night when Marlene got dumped by some asshat with a pencil mustache – no doubt one of those hipsters from Portland – we sat on the top of her apartment building and cried and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. We made a silver and blue beer can pyramid with the empties. It was pretty big pyramid. Marlene was crying. A lot. I had no idea what to say or do so I just sat there like a lump. But a loyal lump.

  Finally Marlene said, “When I was a boy in Rwanda my German father beat my mother within an inch of her life. He beat her because she’d been raped. Then he left forever. I nursed my mother back to health. I wore woman clothes. Her clothes. I wanted to be soft and good like nurses and mothers are. The next month I wore a dress into the township and four boys older than I shoved a truncheon into my anus and beat me within an inch of my life. I managed to make it back home, and my mother had a plane ticket for me. To go to live with my father in Germany. She said, ‘You and I are Tutsi. They are killing us everywhere.’ She said, ‘you will die here if you stay. Take that dress off.’ I loved my mother more than anything in the world. By that time she’d been repeatedly raped and had a scar from being burned across one eye. I remember thinking, is that the worst thing that can happen to a person? Death?”

  Then Marlene stopped crying. The moon was big. Her rooftop looked lit up like a stage briefly. “I have the ability to make any passport. I can be anyone I like. Forever. Or make anyone into anyone else,” she said. Or he. Nothing bad that ever happens to me is going to be as bad as what happened to Marlene. And yet there we were sitting on her rooftop with a PBR pyramid. Just two people with gender issues. I never forgot that moment. How Marlene and Hakizamana were both there. Interchangeable. If need be. In moments of danger or love. We walked back into her apartment leaving the Pabst pyramid as testament to something.

  When I arrive at Marlene’s, three things are true.

  Thing one: Marlene’s door is already open.

  Thing two: silver slickster bus perv is sitting at her kitchen table drinking a glass of Kirsch.

  Thing three: Marlene is pretty much dressed exactly like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. Pencil skirt, white silk blouse, seamed stockings, killer heels. I mean if Barbara Stanwyck was African-American? Spitting image. I almost laugh.

  They look at me. I look at them.

  Marlene says, “Ah, Ida. This man says he knows you. I told him I did not think so, but he says that you recently spoke?”

  I shake my head no. You have to be ready to be anyone in moments of danger or love.

  “Yes I told him that was rather impossible,” Marlene says, standing and walking to the fridge.

  “But we do know each other, don’t we Ida?” Pervola says.

  There’s not much else to do but go ahead and walk in. I do. I sit down at the table. I look at the ceiling. Marlene’s rummaging around in the freezer. No, she’s chipping ice with an icepick into a bowl. She comes back with a glass of Kirsch for me. With ice. She smiles.

  “Ida, I’d like to make you an offer,” slickster says, then turns to Marlene, “perhaps you could help us communicate?”

  “Certainly,” Marlene says. Under the kitchen table she puts her toe on my toe and gently presses down.

  I shoot her a this guy’s a dillweed look. She looks down and under the cover of those mega eyelashes and slips me a yes he most certainly is look.

  “I’m sorry I alarmed you on the bus,” he begins. “That was not my intent.”

  I clench my ass cheeks. Marlene pushes down again on my toe.

  “Look. No sense in pussy footing around. I’ll come straight to the point,” he continues. “I’ll give you $5,000 for your video footage of Freud. Cash. No strings attached.” His smile is smug. He sips his wine.

  I watch his lip curl over the lip of the glass. Middle-aged people’s mouths are kind of creepy – you can see too much gum. And no one is successful at covering up bad breath.

  In my head I go five grand? That’s like getting a birthday card from grandma. Five grand doesn’t get you shit these days. I tilt my head to the side, raise my hand up in a little fist with a thumb pointing up and pump it in the air at him.

  He blanches. Then recovers. “Did I say five grand? I meant twenty-five.” He smug smiles.

  Not even close, ass hat. I shake my head. I pull out a cig and light it. He eyeballs me. He looks like he’s thinking something along the lines of you little shit.

  “I see, he says. “Perhaps you have a number in mind?”

  I retrieve a Sharpie from my backpack. Slowly and deliberately I write a number on Marlene’s kitchen table. $500,000.00. I huff my Sharpie once for punctuation.

  That seems to do the trick. His face beets.

  His breathing through his nose is quick and hard. It looks like he has to will his mouth to say, “That. Can. Be. Arranged.” Teeth clenched.

  I look at Marlene. I don’t know what she sees in my eyes but what I’
m holding in those sockets like little messed up girl marbles is what the fuck is it with all the money? First Sig’s offer, now this? Did I go to sleep and wake up in money land? Is this what being an adult comes down to? You have to speak capital to break your cherry?

  Marlene studies my face. Maybe she’s studying more than that. We’ve known each other since I was fourteen. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence – just getting through to the real part of your life – but it’s more than that.

  Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it’s just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body. Wanna know what we have in common? Dead dreams. Trust me when I say no adult likes to talk about that.

  Plus how do you even know you adult humans have the right interpretations of your own lives? People are like books and movies. There are about a gazillion different interpretations. Deal with it.

  I look at Marlene’s perfectly coifed blonde 1940s wig sitting so artfully on her head. Man that woman sleighs me.

  “That is quite a lot of money,” Marlene says, then pulls a cigarette and lighter from her bra, lights the cigarette, and blows out the slowest coolest curl of white smoke – like you only see in black and white flicks. She turns to creepy dude. She blows a bit of smoke right at him and says, “Tell me, what business do you have with a girl who is, what is it,” she sizes him up like beef, “a quarter of your age?”

  I love Marlene.

  I love Marlene.

  I love Marlene.

  I reach down and into my Dora purse under the table and turn my H4n on.

  “One must be careful,” she continues, “in this day and age.”

  Silverfuck pulls out some paperwork from the breast pocket of his suitcoat and lays it out on the kitchen table like it means something.

  “I’ve got a contract here. This is a real deal. I don’t have time to bullshit about children. My offer is on the table. I’m only making this offer once though.” He then pulls out a silver flask – man what is with all the silver with this guy? And drinks. It’s whiskey. I can smell it. I can also smell his godforsaken lunch. Shrimp of some sort. Ew. He holds the flask out toward me. “Ida? What do you say? You ready to make the choice of your life?”

  I take the flask. I’m seventeen, I’m not an idiot. I drink his nasty shrimp whiskey. A lot. Most of it. Then all of it. I set the empty flask back down on the table. I shake my head no. That’s when the asshole grabs my wrist and twists it and says, “Look you little teen monster bitch, you’re gonna hand over that footage or I’m gonna come take it from you. By any means necessary.”

  Everything next is sound.

  The sound of Marlene shoving her chair back and standing up. The sound of silverfuck doing the same. Still holding my wrist so I’m yanked up like a scary doll. The sound of “Get your motherfucking hands off of the girl” coming from Hakizamana Ojo. Deep and true and macho ghetto menacing. The sound of silverfuck saying “You don’t know who you are messing with, faggot.”

  And then a single, mindbogglingly cool continuous shot: Marlene pulling an ice-pick from inside the sleeve of her silk white blouse and crossing over to silverfuck and headlocking him and bending his free arm behind his back and jamming the ice-pick up against his neck just enough to make him yell and let go of my wrist.

  Told you he was good at his security job.

  I back away from the scene. Panting. But not fainting. Sometimes saviors look different than you thought they would.

  I wish I could say something really great happened here. But life isn’t like it is in the movies. Silverfuck, even in his distorted head and arm lock, begins to laugh. Marlene’s eyes go bigger. I look behind me.

  Silverfuck narrates, “I hope you don’t mind, Ida,” he gurgles under the thick choke hold of Marlene, “I’ve taken the liberty of calling your parents.”

  In the doorway are Peppina and my ashen alien father. In my gut is the inescapable truth of my life.

  “What on earth?” my father says.

  “Ida!” she vixen shrieks.

  Only one thing to do. I puke.

  25.

  IN THE DREAM, I WALK AROUND IN SOME CITY I DON’T know. Classical piano music score. I see cobblestone streets and town squares, which are strange to me except from shitty ass historical drama flicks. Then I come into a house where I live and find a letter from my mother saying “your father is dead and if you like you can cum.” I go down a road and ask about a gazillion times: “where is the station?” But the people are like zombies how they are in dreams. I see a thick wood before me and see the station in front of me and I run toward it, but it’s pretty much like running in Jell-O, and I can’t reach it.

  I wake up. I’m totally sweating. I look over at my digital clock. It’s five a.m. And something else. I am drenched between my legs.

  The whole rest of the “night” I think about that fucking dream. I know exactly what the Sig would say. He’d say I want my dad dead for betraying me. But I have guilt about that, because, you know, wanting your dad dead is kind of not cool. I know what Siggy would say about the woods, too. He’d say it’s a sexual landscape. He’d say what I really want is for Mr. Lechbo K. to penetrate those woods and fuck me silly as revenge against my dumb dad.

  Honestly I don’t know what crack pipe that guy smokes sometimes.

  Wanna know what I think it means?

  I think I dream my dad out of the way so I can find a woman. Maybe my mother. No, I don’t forgive her for her lame-ass lapsed motherhood. But I can still hear the sound of her playing piano in my head. I think when she played the piano she was trying to tell me something. Something about art. But then her marriage tanked and she went numbimbo and I turned into me.

  I think the woods in the dream are in the way, and yeah, they may be a vag map, but I think I’m supposed to go straight through them – vag to vag – to see for myself what’s on the other side. I think she’s been keeping a secret all these years.

  I put my hand between my legs. Sticky. I bring my hand to my mouth. Salty apples. I roll over on my side. I pull the covers over me. I get fetal. I roll around in the bed under the covers. You come from salty goo. Salty goo comes out of you. Maybe it all boils down to vag’s, but that’s not nothing. Under the covers it’s beautiful and dark.

  At about 8:30 a.m. I get a knock on my bedroom door. “Ida?” Fucking Peppina the ho. “Are you decent?” she says.

  Am I?

  After I pull on my skinny jeans and a Velvet Underground T-shirt I open the door. The look on her face is a cross between frightened and fascist. Honest.

  She comes in.

  She sits on the edge of my bed. If you’ve lived through teenager you’ve witnessed several of these sit-downs. They are never, ever, good.

  Peppina is wearing a red sweater with a V-neck so low her cleavage looks cavernous. If I was a man there would be no way to talk to this woman and look her in the eye. Hell, even as me I can’t look her in the eye. I literally feel vertigo. Like I’m gonna fall into that boob cavern. What a way to go, huh?

  “Ida,” Peppina says, and briefly I think wow. We have the two stupidest names in the history of the planet. What’s so hard about coming up with cool girl names? Like Obsidian.

  “Your father thinks perhaps you and I might be able to talk more easily about things,” Peppina says. “Woman to woman.” She takes a deep breath.

  Dudette. You are so not my mother.

  She takes an even deeper breath. I watch her cleavage. Watch out! Those bad boys may blow! I catch myself thinking. Then, really? My idiotic alien dad thinks you should talk things ou
t with me? Perfect.

  “I know you are going through a difficult time,” she says, “and I want you to know that I understand. I do. My own parents were divorced when I was just ten years old. I want you to know that you can talk to me. Because of that. Because I understand.”

  If I had a voice right now? I’d tell her to fuck the fuck off. Since I don’t? I pick my nose.

  She smiles. “Oh Ida. That kind of thing isn’t going to work on me. I’m not … stupid.”

  She scoots over closer to me. I can smell her hoo doo perfume. What’s she up to? I sit in my cone of silence and try to will her sweater to fly off.

  “Listen,” she says in the voice of a vixen, “How about you and I start over? I’d like to take you shopping.”

  Shopping?

  Is this woman insane?

  She inches over ever closer and puts her hand on my knee. My crotch goes warm. My face gets hot. I shake my head no.

  “Ida,” she says, and now she reaches over and holds my face in her hands, “I think we could be friends.”

  I yank my face away.

  Peppina moves so close to me she’s nearly sitting on me. She takes my face in her hands again. This time, she holds my jaw more firmly. “Ida, I have strong feelings for you. Why, I remember when you were just a child…”

  You are so so not my mother.

  I avoid eye contact. I stare down. But you know what’s down there. The cavern. Those enormous pendulous orbs. Whiter than bread. The wicked perfume. Her tits rise and fall with her breathing. The perfume gets all up in my nose. I can’t help it. I want to bury my face in her tits. I want to almost maul her like a chimp. Then she lifts my face up toward hers and kisses me about a centimeter away from my lips, all slow motion-y, my mug still between her hands.

  I’ve still got the booger from before, you know.

  You know how sometimes you do shit you don’t really know where it came from? Yeah. I grab her headful of redhead. My hands sort of disappear in all those waves of auburn hanging around her face and shoulders – I mean it’s mythic – I carefully plant the booger in her perfect hair and then? Eye to eye I lay a big hard wet one right on her mouth.